Renaissance During The Middle Ages

The renaissance was a time of over 300 years which changed European history forever. The renaissance started in Italy and worked its way all throughout Europe. It was a time where arts and literature blossomed, advances in technology were evolutionary, and intellectual excitement flourished. The word renaissance means precisely this, rebirth. Prior to the renaissance was the middle ages. The middle ages was a time where most people were not educated and the only book they would own was the bible. As more people became educated the renaissance began.
During the renaissance arts began to flourish. A new style arose which was vastly different from the middle ages. Art started to move away from from religious subject matters and focus on realism. …show more content…
The only book many people owed was a hand written Bible to which they could barley read. This all changed during the renassance when they were able to print books more rapidly. Plays also became vastly popular throughout Europe. The literature from the renassance showed the differnt way of thinking for example, in the play Hamlet William Shakespeare wrote, “in apprehension how like a god!”. This shows the Renaissance people were viewed as god/angel-like creatures or as works of art. People were now starting to think that they were beautiful people. Adversly, in the document Everyman, inspired by the Middle Ages, the author wrote, “Ye [ man ] think sin in beginning full sweet”. This is an example of the religious based thinking of the middle ages, the poet is showing how humans were considered to be sinners. This just goes to show as to how much the Renaissance differed from the Middle Ages, as the focus on the Church, became the focus on the …show more content…
Around the year 100 CE, a Roman astronomer from Alexandria, Egypt, created a theory, known as the Geocentric Universe, that all life was centered around the earth. But about 1400 years later, a Polish astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus created a new theory relying on his knowledge of mathematics to develop a more modern understanding of the universe. In Copernicus’s theory, the Heliocentric Universe, he shows the universe as how we know it today, with everything revolving around the Sun. When Copernicus revealed his theory to the public, the Catholic Church was not to happy with his discovery. According to them, Copernicus’s new theory disproved everything that the Church had been teaching since around the birth of Jesus. This changed Mans was of thinking and made many people question a lot of what the church